From: Jeremy Carroll <jjc@hpl.hp.com>
Subject: Re: Punning and the "properties for classes" use case (from public-owl-dev)
Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2007 16:36:55 +0000
[...]
> By default, in a WG trying to provide a relatively small revision on an
> established specification, the alternative to making a change is to make
> no change.
>
> This is HP's preferred option here: i.e. no change from OWL 1.0: punning
> prohibited in OWL DL (at least in the RDF form); when a uri is used,
> this takes you into OWL Full, and each URI denotes one thing.
>
> I point to charter text in favour of this position:
> [[
> For each new feature, if there is doubt or a perceived problem with
> respect to this issue, the guideline should be to not include the feature
> ]]
> and
> [[
> The existing compatibility between OWL DL and OWL Full should be preserved
> ]]
>
> both of which seem to me to be directly applicable to punning, and to
> argue in favour of the HP preference.
>
> Jeremy
One can treat punning as nothing new, because it was in the OWL DL
abstract syntax, or as something new, because name separation was
required in the mapping from the OWL DL abstract syntax to RDF triples.
My view is that punning is not new, and that it worked perfectly fine in
OWL DL. Punning is part of the area where the OWL DL semantics is less
powerful than the OWL Full semantics, but this relationship between OWL
DL and OWL Full already existed in OWL 1.0.
The expansion of punning in OWL 1.1 has to do with the lifting of the
name separation between the various kinds of properties (object, data,
annotation, ontology); this lifting makes the language more regular.
The expansion of punning requires no changes in OWL Full (but some
interesting extensions to OWL Full could be made to accommodate it and
actually expand the area where OWL DL and OWL Full correspond).
peter